New web site about The Agricultural Nutrition Advantage project

A new web site on agriculture and nutrition is now online: www.agnutritionadvantage.org. The web site was launched as part of a USAID-funded project called The Agriculture Nutrition Advantage that aims to promote greater linkages between agriculture and nutrition in Africa.

The Agriculture Nutrition Advantage project is a joint effort by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and partners in five African countries: Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Mozambique, and Ghana. The overall purpose is to accelerate the pace of halving the proportion of the world's hungry by 2015 which is one of the millennium goals agreed upon by United Nations' 189 member states at the Millennium Summit held in New York on September 2000 (Millennium Development Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger) as well as the main goal of the 1996 World Food Summit declaration. Current data show that the number of hungry people has been reduced so far by 8 million each year, against the 24 million each year required to achieve the WFS and the Millennium Goal.

The Agriculture Nutrition Advantage project is characterized by an approach to hunger reduction that gives special focus to linkages between agriculture and nutrition, rather than to a mere increase in agricultural production. The participating agencies believe that there is no use in aiming at increased agricultural production if important questions relating to nutritional quality and distribution, i.e. who has access to which resources, are not dealt with at the same time. The participating agencies also emphasize gender analysis as an important instrument in trying to understand causes of food insecurity and hunger as they consider gender roles key determinants of access to resources and contribution to family nutrition.

The project, which was initiated on December 2001, will span a period of four years to September 2005.

Visit the new web site to read more about The Agriculture Nutrition Advantage Project.